This past year my boys have gotten real close with their great grandma. We knew she was getting up there in age and have spent the last several holidays at her house so she wouldn’t have to travel. She loved my boys so very much. She was always hugging on them, talking about them, and just loved them so very much.

Well this past Saturday June 23, 2012 we lost Grandma Mary. She went into surgery to have 7 bypasses and she just didn’t recover. Grandma Mary was a kind woman and treated me like one of her own grandchildren. She will be missed!

Below is a picture that was taken Christmas 2011. Grandma Mary and her 7 great grandchildren.

As my in-laws were rummaging through a few of Grandma Mary’s things they came across this paper tucked away in her bible. My father in-law read it at the funeral and it touched me so much I scanned it so I could keep it. It was something she gave her mother years ago and reminded me of my mother who passed away 6 years ago next month.

I’ve been using a little mason jar for my youngest son’s “piggy bank” for a while. There are two problems with that. One, I have to handle it anytime he puts change in it because it’s breakable. Two, It was ugly! Sure I could have cutened (yes that’s a word, lol) it up a bit but why for such a short term thing (well it was suppose to be short term).

I decided it was time! So with my container, scrapbook paper, letter stickers, and mod podge in hand I went to work. This project took me all of 10 minutes! It’s cute and my 3 yr old can hold it when he puts his own money in now!

First I washed the canister and let it air dry. Then I cut my scrapbook paper to size, used mod podge to adhere it to the canister (elmers works too–used it before for a project like this), stuck my stickers, cut my hole (big enough for a quarter to fit), and it’s now on display in my son’s room (up high of course–I don’t need him choking on a quarter!).

So school is out and summer is here! We definitely know that summer is here in this house….our air conditioning has been out for a week!!! Luckily for most of the week it’s been out we had a little rain that cooled the temperature off a bit. So mostly we’ve been in the low 80’s but we’re quickly climbing back into the mid 90’s! We do have 2 window ac units and a stand alone unit that we’ve hooked up so the living room and bedrooms are cool at night and tolerable during the day.

So back to the popsicle parties! Since my youngest son is 3 and most of his classmates are young I scheduled his popsicle party for the morning. And I had a genius idea to schedule my middle son’s popsicle party for the same day but in the afternoon. Maybe it was the heat since we had no air or the outside temp being in the 90’s since 10am that day but yah….I don’t think i’ll ever do them the same day agian!

Here is a pic of a generic popsicle invitation. I created the invite in photoshop (just learning how to use it). Anyway, I used a popsicle coloring page template, added my text, hot glued a popsicle stick on the back and used a 1.5 inch scallop craft punch to make the bite look. For my real invitations I used some super cute cardstock from Michaels. It was a pale yellow, seafoam green, and a blue…they had embossed polka dots on them too. But this was my test paper…paper I already had at home that I just don’t use.

To get the template email me at messijessimail.com (i’ll post the template when I figure out how to get a psd uploaded!)

Here are pictures from Jayson’s (youngest son) party!

And this is my middle son’s popsicle party!

Overall everyone had tons of fun! I loved the smiles on my boys faces!

This hopper landed on my windshield as I was pulling in my drive way yesterday. I only noticed that it looked like it was on my house when I posted to facebook. I did not edit the hopper onto my house…I did add a filter and border from Instagram!

My nephew graduated high school the other day. I wanted to give him a cash gift but didn’t want to do a gift card or just a card with the money in it. So I got to thinking and this is what I came up with.